Memorable Teachers

Unlike Steve, who pays homage to his best teachers, I remember most vividly the worst teachers I had.

The single exception to this was for 2nd grade, Mrs. Christianson. What I remember was all the different things we did in her class, things that we never thought mere second graders could do. She knew somebody with a kiln who was willing to share time. For Christmas that year we made clip-on earrings, starting with a flattened hemisphere of clay which we each painted and glazed before it was sent off to the kiln. We also made a trivet, rolling out a square of clay, laying a pattern over it, cutting it into pieces, baking, then painting and glazing before sending it off to be baked again. Once that was finished, we glued it onto a square of Masonite and grouted between the pieces. We were allowed to pick our own pictures, whatever we wanted, and colors too. I found a little mouse with a long arcing tail set inside a circle. The teacher warned me that the tail might break, but I really wanted THAT mouse. After giving it (very little) thought, I went ahead, and with much patience, something I was not known for, successfully completed my trivet.

After moving from Nevis to Park Rapids at the end of third grade, I faced a 4th grade teacher that I learned to hate. I loved school, and had loved all my teachers up to this point. It had simply never occurred to me not to. Mrs. Crowell came as a complete shock to me. She started by having every student read aloud so she could place us in with either slower or advanced readers. Somehow she forgot to test me, and simply placed me with the slow readers. Thus far in school my only problem with reading was, having breezed through the book in the first couple of weeks, feigning enough interest to be able to find the place to read when it was my turn, or skimming through the story as the class finally got to it so I could refresh my memory of what it was about. Needless to say, I was outraged! I was also excruciatingly bored, having to wait while someone painfully tried sounding out a word in front of all of the rest of us, and still not getting it quite right.

My parents had already taught me that the teacher was always right. Whatever it was about, whatever happened, there was only one side of the story. So I didn’t bother complaining to them. I just got more miserable as the year progressed. Once report cards came, however, it was a whole new story. They demanded to know why I’d been placed in the slow reading group, so I explained I hadn’t gotten tested like the other kids had. Why hadn’t I said something? I’d been trained not to. They immediately contacted the school, and I got placed in the reading group where I belonged.

Fifth grade was a whole story unto itself.

In seventh grade, we were presented with a first-year latin teacher who was so repulsive we uniformly ganged up on him and drove him out of teaching. I’m not just talking ugly, which he was, or nervous, which he also was, or inexperienced, which was obvious. His personal hygiene was terrible, topped off (all puns intended) by a galloping case of dandruff. The worst part of it came at lunch time. School was laid out so that the cafeteria had a small room off to the side with a glass wall where the teachers ate. They got a break from us but could still observe our behavior, helping to keep us in line. But we could also watch them. Imagine trying to eat lunch when you can see your latin teacher leaning over his plate, scratching his head, allowing visibly huge flakes of dandruff to fall onto his food!

Things settled down until we moved into the big city of St. Paul, and I went from a class of 125 to 600 at Central High School. The first disappointment was the band. He was just not a marching band director, and I came from a small school with a state-wide prize-winning record for marching bands. Band was still the social events class, both because we socialized within it, and because we attended social functions like ball games as a unit. I was surprised to find out later, naive as I was, that the band was considered a clique. Despite lacking all pride in this band, my two best friends at this school came from it.

Eleventh grade college-prep English was taught by Miss Korfhage. I’d say she was a competent enough teacher, but she had one habit that drove me nuts. When she asked the class a question, she called on the boys first. Only when none of them could answer her would she ask one of the girls, no matter how long their hands were raised. I, of course, was quite unused to being ignored in this way, and soon figured out her pattern. One day I raised my hand and kept it up until she finally gave in and called on me. I told her my observations, complaining that we girls deserved to be taught too. She left the room in tears. (I also wasn’t known for tact in those days.) Half the room turned to me and told me how mean I’d been, and half admitted privately that what I’d said was right. After that day I got called on quite a lot - when I didn’t have my hand up and didn’t have an answer, of course. I put up with it, figuring I probably deserved it. But at least she started calling on the rest of the girls in class from then on, at least for that year.

Senior year netted me the dreaded Mrs. Norbeck for social studies. Every year it was the same thing. Everybody hated her class, and tried to get out and transfer to another teacher. There just wasn’t room, and each year only one or two made the switch. We rest were stuck. The school defended her to our parents, saying she was a real prize, having come to this poor public school after a distinguished career in private school. We found this hard to believe. With the exception of the few days a year she had to teach to specific standards, when we learned about government branches and people filling high-profile positions, every day was boringly the same. She sat at her desk and droned on for an hour about some person or another and what they’d done and their high principles. This was probably stuff we could benefit from learning, but the presentation killed it. It wasn’t just the droning voice, no interactions or questions, but the view of her sitting at her desk patting the hairpins back in to where they were holding her coiled braid in place at the nape of her neck. Apparently no hairpins were made that could do the job adequately, for she was constantly pushing, patting, pushing, patting, pushing....

That’s what I remember form a whole year of social studies. Pushing, patting, pushing, patting....